October 14, 2002

In 2004, all the world will be on Athens, for the Olympics there. The New Acropolis Museum is also due to be completed in the same year and in anticipation of this, Greece is stepping up requests for the return of the Parthenon sculptures from the British Museum.

For almost 200 years, one of the world’s great art treasures has been preserved in the British Museum — despite sometimes vociferous protests from Greece that the Parthenon frieze should be restored to its rightful place on the Acropolis.

The controversy over the “Elgin marbles,” the bulk of the sculptures that once adorned the upper sections of the Parthenon, is getting new life because of Italy’s decision to send its small part of the frieze to Greece.Read the rest of this entry »

October 5, 2002

A small fragment of the Parthenon Frieze, one of a number of pieces dotted around Europe, looks likely to return to Athens on loan. The bulk of the sculptures are of course split between Greece & the British Museum – the other smaller fragments only make up about one percent of the total that survive.

October 1, 2002

The planned loan by Italy to Greece of a small fragment of the Parthenon Frieze looks set to raise the profile of the campaign for the reunification of the Parthenon Marbles, Proving that it is perfectly possible for such artefacts to be returned on loan if the political will exists to do so.

October 01, 2002Fragment of Greek history to reignite row over Marbles
From Richard Owen in Rome

A FRAGMENT of the Parthenon frieze kept by an 18th-century British diplomat in Sicily is to be returned to Greece. It is a gesture that is certain to revive the dispute over Britain’s retention of the Elgin Marbles.

President Ciampi of Italy plans to hand over part of a statue of the goddess Peitho during a state visit to Greece next month in a move described by officials as a “gesture of friendship”.Read the rest of this entry »

September 24, 2002

Previously, one of the reasons given for the British Museum’s retention of the Elgin Marbles was the fact that Greece had no suitable location to put them if they were returned. With the construction of the New Acropolis Museum though, this argument will no longer hold water though.

Rarely does an architect have to consider factors like international political debate and the history of western civilization when designing a building. However, Bernard Tschumi, dean of the School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, had to pay close attention to both before submitting his plan for the new Acropolis Museum, which will break ground this summer in Athens, Greece.

Set only 800 feet from the legendary Parthenon, the museum will be the most significant building ever erected so close to the ancient temple and was commissioned by the Greek government to be completed in time for the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens. The structure will also be used in an attempt to help bring the Elgin Marbles back to the city after two centuries in a foreign country. But to understand the importance of the future museum, one first has to examine the history of the land.Read the rest of this entry »

September 5, 2002

The Cullinan diamond, was before cutting, the largest diamond ever discovered. It was mined in South africa, but ended up in the Crown Jewels in the Tower of London. South Africa thinks however that it is due some form of compensation for the vast sums of money that Britain has taken from people viewing the crown jewels, which contain the diamonds cut from the Cullinan.

DAVID DALLING
Share the Star of AfricaSA diamonds could help UK contribute to Nepad

The Honourable the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland,

Mr Tony Blair M.P.,
10 Downing Street,
London
United Kingdom

Dear Prime Minister,

South Africa was recently collectively moved by a gesture of goodwill when the body of a Khoisan woman, Sarah Baartman, a victim of colonial exploitation, who had been put on public display in Europe both during her lifetime and afterwards since the 19th century, was returned from France to her rightful home and at last accorded a burial of dignity and respect.

Greece, in its quest to secure the return of the Parthenon marbles, which the British Ambassador to the Ottoman Empire, Lord Elgin, during the period 1801 to 1810, had stripped from the Acropolis and transported to England, has not as yet enjoyed the same success in attaining the return of its stolen national treasure to Athens.Read the rest of this entry »

August 2, 2002

The New Acropolis Museum was redesigned specifically to avoid creating problems with the archaeological site that it sits over. Many people in Greece (I suspect largely for political reasons) are continuing to raise objections to it, seemingly glossing over everything that it does to avoid damaging the site & instead talking about the potential for destruction. The reality is than anywhere you build in central Athens, you will be on archaeological remains. The building surrounding the Acropolis Museum doubtless damaged large areas of remains when they themselves were built. Far more than most buildings in Greece, this one is deliberately designed around the ruins that it shares the plot of land with, yet people continue to obstruct it construction. Surely though, looking at it pragmatically, it is better to have the building constructed as it is proposed, than to have no building at all? If the objections carry on in this way, a great opportunity for Greece will end up being lost.

Marbles Lost and FoundIn the Parthenon’s Shadow, an Old Grievance Gets Put on a Pedestal
By Kirstin Downey Grimsley
Washington Post Staff Writer
Monday, July 29, 2002; Page C01

ATHENS — A $100 million museum being built here in hopes of shaming the British government into giving back sculptures taken two centuries ago is creating controversy in Greece, where a growing number of critics say the government is damaging other antiquities in a rush to make the museum ready in time for the 2004 Olympics.

They charge that excavation at the museum’s site at the foot of the great Acropolis citadel has uncovered substantial Roman, Byzantine and Stone Age ruins that provide vivid archaeological snapshots of ancient Athens, and that development should be delayed while the remains are studied.Read the rest of this entry »

24 January 2002 00:45 GMTMark Steel: Lord Elgin was only trying to help the Greeks
‘They should retaliate by running off with the dome of St Paul’s and placing it upside down in Athens’
17 January 2002

Whenever the British reject a plea from the Greeks for the return of the Elgin Marbles, we sound like a small-town petty criminal making an excuse for being caught with a van full of stolen bacon. They will “never” be returned to Greece, it was announced this week, because we can look after them better than the Greeks. The full original statement probably went: “We haven’t nicked them or nothing, we’re just looking after them, ‘cos if they were left in Greece, they’d melt with all that sun. And olive oil brings statues out in blotches, apparently.”

This is similar to Lord Elgin’s original argument, that he was swiping the sculptures to protect them from the Ottoman Empire. Since then, we’ve given them nothing but loving care, if you exclude incidents such as the time in 1938 when someone decided they weren’t white enough, and scraped the top from almost the entire collection with wire wool. I suppose the Greeks are lucky that, in the 1970s, no one decided to paint red hats on the statues, stick fishing rods in their arms and stick them in a garden next to a pond. Or cover the whole collection in formica, pebble-dash them and hang window-boxes full of pansies from the water carriers. Or, in the 1980s, try to strip them back to the original wood.Read the rest of this entry »